


You missed the winter and it followed you back home

by TotemundTabu



Series: Commissions [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Ableism, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Parent Death, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 19:06:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18597550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TotemundTabu/pseuds/TotemundTabu
Summary: Tywin/Joanna - Tywin reacting to Joanna’s death -I am sure you were here, until just one moment ago.





	You missed the winter and it followed you back home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tywinning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tywinning/gifts).



> New commission <3 HOPEFULLY, you will like it! I tried to enter in Tywin's head and imagine how he'd feel, how he'd process the grief with pride but also the matter of Tyrion being there and so on.  
> I HOPE it's nice (whoa can you feel the self-doubt tonight!) and thank you again to everyone helping me supporting my friend with her transition!

_I am sure you were here, until just one moment ago._

He blinks, slowly. He is unsure if there are droplets of tears caught in his eyelashes.

He hasn't cried since boyhood, and now, he thinks, _this_ must have dried his heart fully. It must be so.

Because he could cry, he could allow himself to, for once, and yet he doesn’t manage to.

It doesn’t reach him fully, it pulls back, as a wave, about to brush his feet and, instead, called back by the undertow a moment too soon.

He swallows.

The apple in his throat seems to suffocate him.

He runs his fingers, slowly, too slowly, on the half of the sheets she slept on – _they found us so funny for sleeping in the same chamber, remember? I married the only woman I wanted, I never needed different chambers._ She’s not there.

Her absence is thick, dark, heavy.

She’s not there. She’s not anywhere.

A breath – or a sob? - shivers down his throat and lungs and trembling in his chest. He sucks his lips.

He can’t sob, he can’t afford to. He has to resist.

_Maybe, now she’ll arrive._

_Maybe, I’ll open my eyes, it’ll be a_ – he can’t finish the thought, he knows it’s all garbage. Wasted words, wasted thoughts, _a whole world wasted in your absence_.

_I can’t have lost you, c_ _ould I have?_

His chest pulses, shallow breaths that bring no relief, like gulping salted water. He rolls on his side, inhaling sharply, as he stares at the void on the sheets.

And yet, he doesn’t take that in.

Joanna’s absence lingers, sits on him, like a demon or a nightmare, but can’t sink through him.

He doesn’t feel anything, he can’t feel that either.

What scares him the most, though, is that he can’t feel her.

_Are you really nowhere?_

_Let it be a jest, an ill one, you’ll come out with that baby at your teat – a better one, perhaps, one not so monstrous. You couldn’t love him either, could you? You would have tried, perhaps, mothers do that._

_Mothers._

He flinches, trembles. Another breath shivers and it hiccups between his parted, chapped lips. His hair hurts, as it brushes next to the sheets hers used to rub on – and he’d smell her on the pillow and then dive his face in her bosom and kiss her pale skin red.

_What if I pray? That’d be a new low, wouldn’t it? Oh, fair, I’ll pray, I’ll pray the Mother, I’ll tell her to give you back to me. I’ll try to love that monster, if She does._

_I’ll try, I promise._

_From tomorrow, I’ll love him all, even if he’s my doom – the consistent, manifested form of how the gods had to punish me, I’ll love him and kiss him whole like I kissed Jaime, tight in the moonlight, rocking him after you fed him, making him fall asleep again in the first nights he was in the world. I’ll love him. I swear I will, just…_

_Just come here, appear, return. Linger in flesh in my grasp._

_Your memory torments me like thorns and nails through my meat but gives me no relief._

He clenches the sheets, he closes his eyes. He can’t cry, he knows he can't, he knows himself that much.

He cleares his throat but all he can feel is the silence and some sort of deformed version of his own voice, it comes out hoarse and dry and breathless. But it feels like the wettest, roundest sob, like the whine of a child.

He breathes heavily and it shakes him in shame.

_I’ll stand up, I have to._

_I have to. Or they’ll talk, they’ll laugh, they’ll whisper._

“Tywin– ”

He turns, just enough to glimpse at him. He should know who it is, it’s a familiar voice, but his mind won’t accept any other thoughts than her – _it’s winter, you were supposed to see spring again, you were supposed to, we talked of it, you said you wanted to see the magnolias, I made people plant them in the garden for you… I’ll have them uprooted and thrown in the sea_ – and anything against his skin is too much. He’s raw, as if flayed.

He’s raw and everything burns him and tears him apart.

Kevan. He gives him a nod, quickly, he thinks, but it’s probably slow; and Kevan moves closer.

His hand hovers over him, unsure.

_Don’t touch me. I don’t want to be touched. Only she could._

Kevan licks his lips, swallows, as if he heard him.

“I can give dispositions, if you want.”

His voice is soft… soft, tender Kevan – _he understands, and when he doesn’t, he trusts_ ; and yet he can’t find comfort in him, nor in Tygett, bold and angry as he is, nor in Gerion, who’d make fun even of Death in her face if he could.

Tywin shakes his head and pulls up, trying to stand. He has to.

He has to be strong.

_They’re men done outside, but they’re children inside. They can’t see me tilt._

As he moves, his head twists, and he blacks out for a moment; Kevan jumps upfront and supports him. _Do I need help now? What has become of me?_

“Careful, brother. - he murmurs – You didn’t eat.”

“Balderdash. - his mouth feels dry – One night of fasting never weakened a man.”

“… but three days do, brother.”

Three days? When had it been three days?

People will surely have whispered by now – evil, sharp, forked tongues, they must have run, told their lies, told the shameful horrible truth. _I’ll even accept ridicule now, if you appear. Even that. I have no higher offer to make._

_Just come._

“Please, at least drink something. - he offers him a cup, pours water in it, holds it to his mouth – Please.”

Tywin moves his hand as if to refuse.

“For the twins. Or for me. - he pauses – For… because you have to.”

_I know I have to._

_When have I ever forgotten my duties? When did I ever have the luxury to?_

Tywin’s hand grabs the stem of the cup and he drinks; it burns at first, down his throat, it feels thick and too cold and sharp. Sharp like metal. Sharp like a scream.

She screamed so much, her screams still linger – swollen like clouds soaked with rain in their belly – and stand thicker than the tapestry above his head.

“Did he die.”

“Who?”

“That.”

Kevan shakes his head, “The baby is healthy.”

Tywin almost scoffs, he coughs against the cup of water. _Healthy? He’s a gargoyle._

Kevan sits on the bed next to Tywin, grabbing some space but aware not to touch Joanna’s side. “He has strong lungs, strong arms. Granted, stunted legs, odd shape. I know what you think of him, but he’s healthy for how he is. - a pause – He’ll live.”

_The gods couldn’t even grant me a stillborn._

_You would have blamed yourself, wouldn’t you? Perfectionist little bee you were. But that can’t be you, it can’t be us. We couldn’t_ _have made_ _that demon._

_Just come back._

_I’ll kiss the tears out of your eyes, I’ll give you another child, then another, all healthy, all real, all Lannister perfect and gold._

_I’ll do all the things I said I’d never do. I’d dance with you, I’d sing with you – you always made me laugh, only you, I would have owed you a dance, instead of telling you to dance with the children._

_Now you can’t dance._

_And their little hands will be empty._

_And mine too._

_Which sense has this without you?_

Kevan inhales sharply and stands up, going to grab his brother some better clothes, or maybe trying to avoid looking at him.

“We have to dispose of her.”, he says, shyly, staring dutifully away from him.

Tywin nods.

He knows, it’s not like he’s stupid.

_But if I put her away, in that box, all the light won’t come out – there’s no light anymore, she’s nowhere anymore. She’s nowhere. It’s your fault._

_It’s his fault._

His eyelids flutter.

“I’ll be alone a moment.”

Kevan turns, his face a mask of sadness. He seems to be begging: don’t die with her, but Tywin just adverts his eyes.

_Maybe I already did. I didn’t have the luxury to._

He thinks both, he is not sure which is truer. It doesn’t matter.

Kevan moves to the doorstep and turns, “You should go look at him. - he breathes in, sucks his lips – the wet nurses have been saying that the child understands he exists when he sees people looking at him.”

“Empty talk. - he shrugs – I won’t listen to such silliness.”

_Learn he is alive? And he needs me for that? When he took you away? He can never understand it, if that’s so. Fair for him, low-witted goblin who tore you apart…_

_Come back._

His bottom lip quivers. _I’ll love him, if you come back, I swear._

“I’ll go to the twins. - Kevan announces – Cersei has been asking.”

“And Jaime?”

“Jaime is… he stares in the void, I think he’s trying not to think.”

“As if that’d help any.”, he blurts out.

Kevan leaves him and Tywin breathes in heavily. He caresses the bed once more.

And, once more, he closes his eyes and tries to bargain with gods he doesn’t like.

And tries to bargain with himself.

He finds only anger. Golden anger, but anger all the same.

He stands up, trying to measure the steps, trying to measure himself – and walks out of the room and beyond the nursery. He hears crying the monster who killed Joanna and his son.

There must be two of them, like the twins. It feels like that, at least.

_He has a good set of lungs, Kevan is right._

His mother used to say the same of him, that of all of her children, he is the one who roared hardest, just as soon as he came into the world.

For a moment, he’s tempted to enter the nursery – _you’d try to, at least_ – and look in the cradle, and stare at him, at how small he must be, but he finds his feet refusing to and discovers himself afraid, terrified, really.

Because if that babe is his compensation and interest, what if looking at him, he sees himself?

What if then he can’t deny it?

He yields and moves further, clenching his fists behind his back, biting the insides of his cheeks to the blood.

_Tyrion_ , he muses, _after Tyrion the Torment_ _or_ _. You don’t deserve the name she picked for you… you tore that right apart when you did her womb._

He feels something tilting and jumping in his throat and he quickly swallows down. If three days passed, he can’t afford to tear up now.

And nobody deserves to see him weak. The only one who did is gone, now.

And Tywin is sure too much of him had followed her already.


End file.
